Make Fetish A Part Of Your Everyday Life

Dita Von Teese Fills Us In On How To Make Fetishes A Part Of Our Everyday Lives

People often ask me if there is an element of feminism in my burlesque performances or even in my boldly sexual photographs. Yes, if you define feminism the way I do: being as feminine as possible. Now, I know a lot of people won’t like that answer, and they won’t find anything liberated in my representing myself as bound, weak, vulnerable — stereotypically female. John Willie called it “the realization of helplessness.”

There is strength in submission. Why, I have to wonder, is it more acceptable to play a dominatrix than a damsel in distress? As my friend Ernest Greene says, “Feminine submission is the stereotype to be liberated.” So, perhaps, I am interested in liberation.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch put it this way: “Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman’s entire but decisive advantage.” Perhaps things have changed — Sacher-Masoch wrote in the late 1800s, after all.

But once in a while, it’s a devious lot of fun to pretend that they haven’t.